body count
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: His body is covered with the imprints of a number of strange men who weren't you. How many lovers had he gone through? And, oh, Matt, wouldn't you like to know?


**Title: body count**

**Rating: T**  
**Spoilers: G**eneral

**Characters**: M2

**Summary: Who touched him? When? How many lovers had he gone through? And, oh, Matt, wouldn't you like to know?**

**Disclaimer: **disclaimed

**Author: **_Lady Avaritia_

Concrete buildings, paper-thin walls that offer nothing but the feeble illusion of privacy at best (you can hear the sound of all the five neighboring families as they go about their lives), small cramped apartment with cockroaches bigger than your thumb…

It's oddly reminiscent of your childhood home, and you shudder. You always end up like that, don't you, Matt? You always end up poor and alone and lost in the big city. Your lips are cracked and bleeding from the cold. You've hardly slept for days. Your skin is sallow and your cherry red hair is limp and lifeless like autumn leaves.

You know, Mattie, it seems like you're falling apart.

You bring in the narrow room the stench of alcohol and cigarettes, wrapped constantly around your person like an obsessive lover.

You kick your boots off, and you shed most of your clothes, throwing them haphazardly behind you on the way to the small chaotic bedroom, where it smells like stale air, and the floor is covered with unwashed clothes, and take-out boxes, and the only good, expensive, classy thing is the laptop, whose green light assures you gently that the charging is complete.

And then you finally notice it. The one thing wrong with the room. The one thing out of its place.

There is a gorgeous slut asleep on your bed.

It's not just any slut, though. It's your gorgeous slut. Though, he never really was yours, was he? It's Mello. Finally, it's Mello. Undeniably real and impossibly there, on your uncomfortable springy bed, between the dirty, old and worn-out cotton sheets,

And disemboweled snug-pillows.

His face is pale marble stilled in a mask of perfection, and the fine silk of his golden hair is splayed on an ugly green-and-white striped pillow, with several tears.

His luscious full lips are parted. You cannot possibly doubt that once he opens his eyes, they will be the same startling, ridiculously perfect blue, like a piece of sky trapped in a glacier.

He looks good, you note. Much better than you, in fact. Well-fed, for one. You look around the room, for any sign of why he's here, but aside from the black fur-trimmed jacket, he's left nothing, except for himself.

He's better dressed than you, at least. His long slender legs are covered by a pair of skin tight black pants that might as well have been painted on his bare skin. His lean torso is clad in a black leather vest, which stands out starkly against his apple white skin.

It's so different, so un-Mello. Then again… have you ever known what is Mello and what isn't?

How quickly it all goes. Like a quarter in a kid's ear, a dove under the flick of a black cape. Maybe a trick of the eye. You never were sure what you were seeing when Mello was involved. Mello the illusion.

Seducing Near… that had been a challenge, but Mello, Mello was impossible. He was rough, he was tender, he was Sweet and painful. He made you feel dizzy, he made you question everything. He was never boring. Ne made you feel like a whore when you were with him. He treated you like a whore. That beautiful shameless slut. The trick you never mastered.

Now ya see him. Now ya don't.

At least that hasn't changed. His long elegant arms are covered in a violent map of his latest escapades. Vicious flowers of blue, black and green have blossomed on the skin. Bite marks have graced the pale marble column of his neck. He looks fragile and yet… not.

You can feel yourself reverting. Welcome back to the way you were. Here you go. One broken heart for two. Like back then in Wammy's. He'd step in late, ragged, beautiful and sluttish, and he would lie on your bed, curled on your pillows, with your blankets, while the imprints of another fuck buddy (for lover is too gentle a term) fade on his white wax skin. He wouldn't let you touch him, then. He was never with two people on the same day.

And you sat, and you observed him, and you counted all the bruises.

You catch yourself as you're doing it now. You wonder if he's still like that – offering his body to anyone who'll have him, and yet oddly keeping his standards, his one-per-day and I-only-sleep-alone-in-my-bed rules.

You want to wake him. Run your calloused hands through the threads spun of pure gold that make his hair, and cover his perfect shoulders with your palms, wrap yourself around him like city smog and keep him safe. It's what you've always wanted to do, even now.

And you find yourself oddly angry too. Because here you are – you're starving, you've killed, you've stolen, you are tired, and you feel ridiculously old, and you have nightmares about your father and crashed whiskey bottles, sweet naïve little Mattie, who never quite grew up, and he is here too, Mello, the pretty doll, and what has he been doing all this time? His skin is like parchment sudden with the ink of undeniable evidence.

You've changed for him, mutilated yourself, rooted out all foolish notions of the world, so you could accommodate yourself to him. And he… he's still there, the same lovely boy, tempting beyond any of your wildest wet dreams. Still doing the same thing – fucking people. Why?

Why can't h ever be just yours? What does he need form them? What aren't you giving him?

Finally, you bring yourself to touch him, and trace the bruises on his ivory skin. You shudder. He is warm and soft and alive.

Who left his mark here? Who dared touch him? Was it more than one? How many were they? In those last few years, how many?

You want to wake him, roughly, slap him, hurt him until he's broken and bleeding and then ask him why is he here, what more does he want from you? He didn't need you before when he left, the dirty whore.

But really…

Who?

When?

How?

How many?

And, oh, Mattie, wouldn't you like to know?


End file.
